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When I was growing up I had a tendency to want to run faster than my feet could carry me which was generally about the time I would get a good yank on my collar with my dad telling me to "slow down". Well, the market has been running quite a bit faster recently than the underlying fundamentals will support which was evident with today's release of the Chicago Fed National Activity Index (CFNAI).

While the index did come in at a slightly improved, but still negative, -22 from last month's downwardly revised reading of -59 the 6-month average is still in recessionary territory which tells you a lot about the overall trend. If you will remember the Chicago Fed National Activity Index (CFNAI) is a monthly index designed to better gauge overall economic activity and inflationary pressure. The CFNAI is a weighted average of 85 existing monthly indicators of national economic activity. Since economic activity tends toward a trend growth rate over time, a positive index reading corresponds to growth above trend and a negative index reading corresponds to growth below trend. Currently, this index is trending toward a below trend growth rate.

With Europe's combined services and manufacturing PMI index sliding to its lowest level since July 2009 and with the National Association of Business Economics (NABE) survey showing that U.S. hiring plans have been cut to the lowest levels since December of 2009 there is little to be excited about with the ...